Just curious. If someone takes a Zyrtec every day for seasonal allergies and whatnot, and that person had a potentially dangerous allergy to bee stings, would the fact that they had taken the pill before being stung lessen the severity of the reaction (maybe buying them time to get to the hospital for treatment?) What about if they had just happened to take benadryl (sp?) a few hours before being stung?
Benadryl has only a four hour half-life. If it was taken within an hour or two, it might help.
The Zyrtec might help, but I wouldn’t bet my life on it. I carry an epi-pen for my wasp allergy.
Yes to both. Antihistamines can blunt anaphylactic reactions.
Whether or not they’d blunt it enough to buy time, prevent death, etc. is another question.
Sorry if this is a stupid question, but is Zyrtec an antihistamine? Why doesn’t it make you drowsy?
Zyrtec is an antihistamine, and it does cause more drowsiness than, say, Claritin. But not as much as Benadryl. For the average user.
The 2nd generation antihistamines (zyrtec, claritin, allegra, etc) don’t cross the blood-brain barrier as readily as the 1st generation ones like benadryl or chlorpheneramine (to name only a few), so cause less sedation. Zyrtec crosses the barrier more than claritin or allegra.
I’ll throw out a bee sting reaction question here.
At one time I had a nasty response to wasp stings - sort of between an exaggerated local reaction and short of full-blown anaphylaxis. Then I lived in Texas for a few years and ran into fire ants, which gave me some swelling when stung but that diminished with repeated stings.
Subsequent wasp stings have not caused any significant reaction.
Is it possible that getting acclimated to fire ants also desensitized me to wasp stings (I haven’t been able to find any literature suggesting this is possible)?